Partners In Angst

November 24, 2002|By Hugh Hart Special Correspondent

George Clooney has been known to write a scorching letter or two. He excoriated Bill O'Reilly when the newscaster criticized a 9/11 fund-raising telethon and penned an angry note to a tabloid TV show for invading his privacy. So last year, when Steven Soderbergh learned he was about to receive a hand-delivered letter from Clooney, the Oscar-winning director had a panic attack.

"A woman who works with him called me up and said `I have a letter from George that I'm to put in your hand' and I thought, `Oh God!'" Soderbergh says. "I'm trying to run through my mind, `Did I say something in an interview or what?' That was my first reaction, because I know George usually writes a letter when something's gone wrong."

As it turned out, the actor was simply lobbying for a role in Solaris, albeit in a peculiarly formal manner. Clooney and Soderbergh were certainly on speaking terms, since they'd just finished working together as co-producers (as well as director and star) on Ocean's Eleven. But Clooney was trying to be gentlemanly.

"I knew Steven was talking to another actor," he says. "I'd read the Solaris script and I was really turned on by the idea of it, but I also didn't want to put Steven in a stressful position. He is my friend and my partner. So I thought the best way to give him the out was for me to give him some space by writing and say `Look, I'd love to take a shot at it.'"

"And there was a check enclosed," Soderbergh cracks.

Adds Clooney: "And some photographs he wanted back. I had the negatives."

Clooney, dressed in black cable-knit sweater, gray slacks and polished black leather cordovans, is sitting on a sofa in a Los Angeles hotel room next to Soderbergh, who's propped up rigid as an ostrich in black pants and combat boots. They can joke about Solaris now -- the film opens Wednesday -- but the making of this thinking man's sci-fi picture required a two-month immersion in intergalactic angst.

Based on Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 Russian film and the original sci-fi novel by Stanislaw Lem, Solaris stars Clooney as Kelvin, a psychologist sent to find out why space station scientists (Jeremy Davies and Viola Davis) have been going mad. He gradually figures out that Solaris, a planetary organism of super intelligence, has generated new life forms based on the crew members' memories. Kelvin, haunted by the suicide of his wife (Natascha McElhone) years earlier, has to confront his own past when she apparently shows up on the station.

"Solaris required a complete dispersal of all the charm and good spirits that we normally associate with George," Soderbergh says. "The other thing is, it's really a non-verbal part. It's a completely interior performance, and that characterizes a lot of the great performances that George and I both enjoy from the American new wave films of the late '60s and early '70s. To my mind, I thought of this as George's Five Easy Pieces."

In adapting the screenplay, Soderbergh says he was attracted by "those issues of memory, guilt, potential redemption and the opportunity to do something again and maybe do it differently."

"There's a line in there that says there are no answers, only choices," he adds.

Solaris' somber themes made for a somewhat gloomy shoot. "Our sets are usually pretty loose," says Soderbergh. "On this one, people would show up with a smile on their face and you could watch it fade because the atmosphere was just so intense."

Clooney arrived on the Solaris set in May seriously overworked from directing the Chuck Barris biopic Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (set for Dec. 27 release). "It actually helped in a way because I was exhausted," he says. "There really wasn't any fight left, to say `Kelvin wouldn't go and do that.' All I had to do have some sense of what Steven was trying to do story wise. He'd say: `You've got 30 seconds left to live. Go!'

"I didn't worry about having full comprehension. No one had full comprehension. When I read the script for Solaris, I went, `I understand two thirds of it, and I think I understand the other third, but I'm probably wrong.' And I thought that was really interesting."

For Soderbergh, having his familiar collaborator on hand meant he didn't have to stand on ceremony when setting up a scene. "I'm not a big talker," Soderbergh says. "I don't like to beat it to death. I want to save it for when the camera's running, and if you have enough history, you don't have to give a big..."

Clooney completes the thought: "...motivational speech."

"When you have a short hand," Clooney continues, "Steven could just say, `OK, 20 percent more existential dread.' Which is actually what we would say."

Soderbergh: "Yeah. `Crank it, more dread, more dread, more dread.'"

Clooney: "And I'd go, `OK, got it.'"

Soderbergh turns to Clooney: "Most people in your position don't want to play someone who doesn't know what's going on and is frequently terrified, like sheer full-on terror, about what they are experiencing."